GOP should get serious about cyberspace

It’s time for Republicans to get serious about the online revolution before it’s too late. While the Democrats keep extending their political reach into cyberspace, too many in our party keep pretending the Internet will go away.

Like a predator approaching an ostrich with its head in the sand, the Internet will not disappear. In fact, the Internet is quickly consuming many aspects of our lives, including how we engage with the political world. To ensure our party’s future, Republicans must start to navigate this intersection of technology and politics as deftly as the Democrats have.

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In this election cycle, Democrats have used the Internet to build a campaign infrastructure, allowing them to outraise, outorganize and outcommunicate Republicans. We can scoff at Howard Dean, but he used the tools of the Internet to build a national fundraising base of small donors and activists. Likewise, Barack Obama is poised to be nominated largely because he knew how to deal with the distributed, open nature of the Internet.

Obama’s success resulted directly from his deft use of the Internet. This happened because the information superhighway isn’t a toll road. Anyone with a broadband connection, whatever his or her political persuasion, can create a viral video capable of changing minds and propounding ideas — and extending the reach of his or her candidate.

The open Internet is antithetical to the hierarchical, top-down model that heretofore dominated American politics. The Washington-centered model of campaign committees and big-money fundraisers and media buys is rapidly collapsing. And the Republican Party needs to embrace that change.

As Republicans, we must not only adopt the new techniques and structure of Internet democracy, but also understand the importance of preserving the open nature of the Net as a policy issue. The tools that are available at low cost to Republicans are only there because of an Internet ecosystem that has managed to remain open, despite the efforts of phone and cable companies.

Republicans need to adopt a lighter approach that will preserve the values of decentralization and freedom — essential conservative values — on the Internet. If we fail to engage in this effort, the Internet service providers, who control the last mile of the tubes into a customer’s house or small business, will choke off the affordable tools available to conservative activists. They have already started exercising their market power to block applications that enable Internet users to distribute information across the Net.

They will make the Internet look a lot more like cable TV, where citizens lack access to every legal channel available and where, consequently, conservative activists get shut out. Taking away these free tools will come at the major expense of the activists and small-businesspeople who are the core of our party’s strength.

Moreover, if Republicans hide behind goals such as protecting the free market and refuse to engage in protecting the open Internet, we will cede ground to the left and see an excessive regulatory solution that would further empower the Federal Communications Commission. There are good, sensible approaches championed by Republicans that would provide a sensible, conservative approach to this issue.